Kill Decision (49 page)

“Whistleblowers never get rewarded, David. They get punished.”

The engines gained speed while they exchanged stares. They soon lifted off, rising over the vast container yard.

Ritter gestured to it. “That’s the modern world down there. Automated. Why should war be any different?”

“Because war can destroy us.”

Ritter sighed. “It’s going to happen. They need to invalidate the traditional military. They need to show that it’s obsolete—and that requires a demonstration. You know that.”

McKinney narrowed her eyes at him. “Who the hell are you?”

He ignored her. “Listen to me, David. We shouldn’t be fighting. Men like you will always have a place.”

“I already have a place.”

The chopper was rising toward a lush hilltop festooned with banners covered in Chinese script. The summit had a circular road with a swath of grass. It was the only obvious landing zone, so the pilot brought them down, causing a couple of park visitors to flee for cover from the wind.

Moments after they touched down, several people with long, black nylon bags slung over their backs rushed to the chopper. As the doors opened, McKinney smiled at the sight of Foxy, Ripper, Smokey, and Mooch. Over the sound of the idling rotors Odin shouted to the pilot, “Out!”

The man looked incredulous until he saw Foxy and Ripper with .45 tactical pistols at the pilot’s and copilot’s doors. He unbuckled and quietly exited the chopper while Mooch and Smokey climbed in back, unslinging their rifles. They also appeared to have small nylon enclosures for the ravens—each bird behind a screen mesh. They passed these inside. In a few moments Foxy had taken the pilot seat and Ripper the copilot’s. They pulled on headphones as they did.

Foxy raised the throttle and the big chopper lifted off smoothly from the top of the hill. “Man, I love Sikorskys. This is the way to travel.”

Ripper spoke in her headset, looking back at Odin. “Where we headed?”

Odin picked up the map of the
Ebba Maersk
from the printout sitting nearby and handed it to her. “South. Out to sea.”

She examined the map. “We won’t have the range to get out there and back again.”

Odin just stared. “I know.”

CHAPTER 29

Improvise

R
itter contorted his body
and pounded his feet into the wall panel. “Goddammit, David! What you’re doing is insane! You can’t stop this. You’re too late.”

Odin stared at the ocean passing below. He was now in the copilot’s seat, headset on, examining his map of the South China Sea. “You’d better hope we can stop it.”

“You’re the reason they activated it early. It’s already too late. What you’re doing is pointless.” Ritter nodded toward the instruments. “We’ve only got a four-hundred-mile range. We won’t have enough fuel to get back to land.”

“We’ll be landing on the
Ebba Maersk
.”

“No! You won’t. Goddammit, that’s what I’ve been . . . you won’t be landing on the ship. What sense does it make to throw all our lives away?”

Odin turned slowly in his seat to face Ritter, as did McKinney and Evans.

Foxy spoke into his pilot headset. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Odin nodded toward Ritter. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if we approach that ship, we will die. Anything that approaches that ship in the next seventy-two hours will die.”

“Do you know how to stop it?”

“There is no way to stop it. That’s the whole point. They take care of it.”

“Who’s behind this, Ritter?”

“I don’t know! My job was to make you stop looking. But if you turn around, I’ll help you find out who’s in charge. I swear it. Just turn the chopper around.”

Odin turned forward again. “Sure you will.”

Ritter’s face contorted, and he started kicking the wall panel again. “Goddammit, turn around!”

“What’s that ahead?” Foxy pointed at a wisp of black smoke on the horizon.

Odin nodded. “Make for it.” He turned back to the others. “Get ready.”

“If you get too close, they’ll knock us out of the sky.”

Evans stared at Ritter, the man’s panic starting to rub off on him. “Maybe we should listen to him, Odin.”

“Mission’s not done yet, Mordecai.”

Evans sighed. “Fuck . . .”

The smoke on the horizon grew rapidly into a black plume, and then to a smoking ship wallowing on the waves.

Foxy brought them in low and fast as they passed over a two-hundred-foot-long fishing trawler crawling with what looked like black vampire bats the size of surfboards. The nets were torn apart on the booms, and the wheelhouse was engulfed in flames. There were burn holes in the steel hull. Bodies and debris floated in the water all around it. The ship was clearly sinking, its bow almost in the waves.

The black-winged drones swarmed over the surface of the vessel, showers of sparks flying up as they cut the ship apart even as it sank. Clouds of smaller drones hovered above them—and then rose to give chase to the passing helicopter.

“Heads up, heads up!”

Foxy leaned the chopper forward, increasing speed. “I’m on it.”

The smaller drones fell back behind them.

McKinney stared at the carnage, trying to come to grips with what they were heading into.

Ritter just groaned. “I told you. And this is nothing. We need to turn back.”

Odin nodded toward the horizon. “The colony ship must have left these behind.”

McKinney tapped his shoulder. “They wouldn’t know they’re on a ship. It’s just the nest to them. The model wouldn’t make it easy for them to find their home ship if they couldn’t see it.”

“Then they’re single-use. But I guess they have plenty of extras.”

Evans was still looking back at the drones devouring the trawler. “I was standing on solid ground. I could have just gotten out with the pilot, but no . . .”

Odin looked at the map. “The
Ebba Maersk
came straight through here.”

Ritter shouted, “I’m telling you, we need to turn back. It’s too late to do anything about this!”

Odin drew a .45 tactical pistol and aimed it straight at Ritter’s face. “You want to add something constructive, or do you want to go out the door right now?”

Ritter just stared at the gun barrel, then turned away sullenly toward the wall.

McKinney eyed Odin, but he stowed the pistol and turned back toward the front. “Professor, please think of a way to stop this Frankenstein monster of yours.”

“It’s not my Frankenstein monster—and I don’t know. I’m . . . I’m thinking.”

They traveled for another thirty minutes in deep existential silence, listening only to the white noise of the engines. Then Foxy pointed to the horizon again.

“More smoke ahead.”

Odin nodded. “Two plumes this time.”

Foxy glanced down at the fuel gauge. They had traveled about four hundred miles in two and a half hours, deep into the center of the South China Sea. “Running low on fuel, boss. Probably not more than another thirty minutes’ running time.”

Odin nodded. “We saw the position of the ship. We’re within range of it. Just keep going.”

Ritter groaned in despair.

Soon they were roaring past two more vessels a mile apart, burning and adrift. One was a large pleasure yacht fully engulfed in flames on its way to burning to the waterline. The other was a rusted freighter, guttering plumes of black smoke from the stern, which just now rose up out of the water as the ship slipped beneath the waves—several drones still cutting into its keel with a brief shower of sparks and smoke.

Foxy grimaced. “Don’t see any survivors in the water. Those hovering drones are probably the people killers.”

Odin scanned the horizon with binoculars. He lowered them and pointed. “Up ahead. That’s gotta be it. It’s huge.”

After a few minutes they could see the ship with the naked eye. It was a massive light blue container ship leaving a broad wake. It was easily two hundred feet wide, but they could see what looked to be a dark cloud swirling all around it. And then part of the cloud split away—heading in their direction.

McKinney put on her headphones. “My God. There are thousands of them—there’s no way we’re getting near that ship.”

Ritter shouted, “I’ve been telling you. This is suicide!”

Odin turned to face McKinney. “The crew is probably dead and the ship on autopilot. If we can disable the rudder, we might be able to stop it from reaching the vicinity of the carrier strike group. That’s about two hundred miles south of here.”

Foxy veered the chopper to starboard, curving away from the
Ebba Maersk
—still only a blue smudge on the horizon. They were still about twenty miles from it at an altitude of five thousand feet, but the indistinct swarm was heading up toward them. “Those things aren’t slow. Best not to stick around.”

McKinney leaned forward to put a hand on Odin’s shoulder. “We have no choice. If we don’t leave their attack perimeter, they’re going to knock us into the sea.”

Odin stared straight ahead but then nodded. “Turn toward Paracel, Foxy. Maybe we can get some resources there.”

“Wilco.”

Odin was deep in thought while Foxy examined the GPS on the console. He pointed at the nav screen map. “With the fuel we have left, even Paracel is going to be dicey.”

McKinney pointed far off to the right, westward. “Is that another ship?”

Odin raised the binoculars to the western horizon. He pondered what he was looking at, then lowered them. “A cargo ship. A big one, headed north—away from the
Maersk
.” Odin pointed. “Make for it.”

“Maybe we can use their radio to warn away other shipping or contact the navy.”

Odin nodded.

It took several minutes for them to get into the vicinity of the second large ship. It had a sleek, aerodynamic design and was painted in bright orange and white. Despite its smooth shape, it was oddly tall and bulky for a cargo ship—shaped much like a passenger ship or high-speed ferry, but it had no windows along its side—just smooth white-and-orange-painted steel with the words
Wallenius Wilhelmsen
painted in two-story-tall letters.

Odin pointed down. “Car carrier. Bring us down.”

“You want me to land on that?”

Odin examined it with the binoculars. “It’s got a helipad right there in the center.”

“Yeah, meant for something like a Bell or an MD 520. This is a goddamned Sikorsky.”

Odin tapped the dash fuel gauge, which was already into the red. “We don’t have a choice.”

Foxy looked below again. “Oh, hell . . . aye, aye, skipper.”

They descended toward the fast-moving ship. As they came up on it, several of the crew on deck waved—obviously thinking the chopper was just doing a flyby.

Foxy leaned down to examine the equipment-and-ventilator-shaft-studded deck. “Should I try to hail them on the radio first?”

Odin shook his head. “No. Signal an emergency with your landing lights and get this bird down, Foxy.” Odin checked the safety on his stolen MP5 submachine gun, which he then slid into a satchel bag. He looked back to the others. “We are going to commandeer this vessel. Control must be established rapidly and with as little violence as possible.”

“As little violence . . . ?” McKinney leaned forward. “My God, what are you doing?”

“Improvising. We’re going to ram the
Ebba Maersk
, Professor. This vessel’s clearly faster than that container ship.”

The faces of the others registered varying degrees of shock.

Foxy chuckled. “All those years in counterterrorism, and here I am hijacking a ship.”

Ritter stared in unbelieving amazement. “You can’t be serious? That swarm is designed to kill ships. That’s what they do.”

“We’ll see how long it takes them to do it.” Odin turned around in his seat. “I know you’ll try to warn the crew, Ritter. But in reality, you’re gonna help us.”

“The hell I am.”

Odin gestured to Smokey with a choking motion. Smokey immediately grabbed Ritter from behind in a chokehold. The man kicked and clawed at Smokey, but he was no match for the muscular commando.

McKinney shouted, “David, what are you doing! This isn’t right!”

“We’re not killing anyone. Just making sure he doesn’t mess up the plan.”

Even now she could see Ritter’s eyes rolling upward as Smokey’s chokehold blacked him out. “Mooch.”

Mooch had already opened his medical bag and was test-squirting a needle he’d prepared during the melee. “Roll up his sleeve.”

Ripper quickly did so, and Mooch delivered the injection. “I don’t know his health history, Odin, so this isn’t a big dose. You’ve probably got twenty minutes or so until he wakes up.”

“Good enough. If they ask, this is a medical emergency. He’s an oil executive returning from an offshore platform.” Odin tossed a container-yard hard hat into the backseat. “We think he had a stroke, and we need to see their ship’s doctor. The doctor’s cabin is usually close to the captain’s quarters, and the captain’s quarters are always next to any weapons.”

Foxy frowned. “It’s a commercial vessel, and this isn’t the Indian Ocean. They probably won’t have any weapons.”